Darwin for the DNA age

This article was taken from the October 2011 issue of Wired
magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before
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In the last 30 years, Juan Enriquez has overseen the rebuilding
of the Mexican National Zoo, helped
negotiate the Chiapas Peace Accords, delivered the first scholarly
paper on mad cow disease to the UK's Royal Agricultural College,
participated in a voyage to map biomass in the world's oceans,
funded successful biotechnology startups and
published a series of books that proved eerily accurate in their
ability to predict economic and political trends. And, according to
sources, he also makes a dangerous margarita, a killer mojito and a
superior guacamole.

But what's currently obsessing Enriquez is his vision about the
next stage of human evolution: from Homo sapiens to a new species he
calls Homo evolutis. He recently published a short ebook
of this name, based on his 2009 TED talk, written with his Excel
Medical Fund partner Steve Gullans. In it, they argue that
genomics, robotics and other
scientific innovations are turning Homo sapiens into a
higher form of hominid, one that's able to take its evolution into
its own hands. This new species will be able, or already is able,
to regenerate limbs, extend its lifespan and control its
environment in ways considered impossible a decade ago. The authors
think evolution is like that -- it occurs in bursts, and the world
transforms before you've even noticed that the change has
begun.

The pair say they aren't futurists. "What we're doing is closer
to history and cartography," they write. "We focus on discoveries
that have occurred very recently, and how they will profoundly
change tomorrow."

Homo Evolutis combines short, elliptical sentences,
charts, photographs, emoticons and nerdy jokes into a dizzying yet
entertaining voyage into astrophysical,
biological and anthropological research. In it, Enriquez and
Gullans argue that hominid speciation has been going on for
millions of years, and that only very recently in the history of
the universe did Homo sapiens become the only member of its
species. Our asumption that no other humanoid would ever appear
"completely ignored all evolutionary history and the fossil
record", they write. "And, perhaps, far more importantly, it also
ignored what is occurring right around us daily as our ability to
read, copy and write life-code evolves."

Enriquez sees this with absolute certainty. He believes that
time and science will prove his Homo evolutis thesis to be
correct. "It's a very different gig from the hominid that's aware
of its environment," he says. "A lot of people think that the way
you modify evolution is, you change the human hand, or make this
person taller or shorter. All that stuff is going on, but we're
also keeping people alive today who, under most circumstances,
would have been dead a long time ago. And we're bringing people
into the world today who likely would have never been born. You
look at pregnancy today
and see that there are at least 17 ways to get pregnant. All of a
sudden you can have a baby in five years, ten years, 50 years, 100
years. You're decoupling time and reproduction. That's a very
advanced concept.

"When you bring together the ability to read life with the
ability to rewrite life, you're going to generate a big chunk of
the coming global economy," he continues. "We're going to try to do
that. We're going to try to change energy, we're going to try to
change chemicals, we're going to try to change medicine, we're
going to try to change a pile of stuff. We're just beginning to
touch it. That's what's amazing."

Enriquez is a TED
rock star: he gave a prescient 2003 conference talk, "Decoding
the future with genomics", and in 2011 was one of two guest TED
curators, the first time anyone has held that honour. The other was
Bill
Gates.

But although the 52-year-old can boast a list of professional
accomplishments worthy of a handful of careers, Enriquez still
approaches the world like a perpetual student. In his mind, he's
barely begun. "I've got so much to learn, it's ridiculous," he
says.

It's late spring at the intersection of Vassar and Main in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Enriquez, wearing the smart-casual tech
uniform of a blue blazer, white shirt and khaki trousers, looks
around at the heart of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) campus. He sees nothing but progress.

"You're standing on the most important corner on the planet
today," he says, pointing out all the adjacent buildings. To his
mind, the diverse areas of research being conducted inside them are
all interconnected.

"This is what's going to determine what's going on with brains
and cognitive research," he says, indicating to a building behind
him."This is where most of the public human-genome sequencing is
done. And this is the centre for integrative cancer research. Back
here, they're doing the future of fuels, the future of electricity,
the future of viruses and robots."
He points out the headquarters across the street of Novartis and
Genzyme, two huge genomics firms, and adds that at least 200 other
life-science firms are headquartered within three kilometres. "This
place right here, in market capital, has created companies
equivalent to the thirteenth-largest economy on the planet," he
says.

Since 2004, Enriquez, along with several partners, has operated
the Excel Medical Fund, a venture-capital firm that he calls a
"weird little nerd shop". It has helped create "some very
interesting little companies", including Synthetic Genomics, which
produced the world's first completely artificial life form. Many of
those little companies are earning millions in revenue, but
Enriquez says they have a chance to make more than just money.